I've bought from Baen. As a company they are brilliant. I'd wish a broader range of fiction from them, but they're a great company. I just wish that a decent ebook reader was an order of magnitude cheaper. They ought to be. All I really want is a screen and a really minimal amount of computer power and storage attached so it can run a PDF display and browser. Not much to ask, you'd think.
I've never understood how americans can keep a cat cooped up in a house all of its life. In the UK, cats almost always have a cat flap and come and go as they please. Anything else seems cruel.
Yes. I wish the public would get this. We're all criminals! To add someone to the database just find something and convict the, For the few who have managed to avoid breaking any of the multitude of laws (and how do you know you haven't there are so many), the laws will just continue to be piled up until there's something you will break whether its criminalising the smoking of relaxing substances or using a PGP key that hasn't been registered with the government. When needed, you will be a criminal. You may not even need to be convicted. There are thousands of DNA samples preserved by the UK police of people who were never convicted of anything and their names are on the police database.
And sepearate to the information on the crimes you may or may not have committed could be a lot of personal information that you may not wish to be searchable by the huge number of people that have access to this.
That sums it up for me. The one advantage of a one-time or disposable credit card number would be anonymity. This doesn't have that. I want something I can buy in a shop for cash, load up with a pre-paid amount and use online, throwing away when I'm done with it.
Well that's fine for the companies that provided this solution. Because now there is lucrative money in fixing the security problem. If they got it right the first time then the big money would dry up. Government contracts are about redistributing your tax money to private business. Basically.
Well that's a good thing because if someone is set upon by biased propoganda out in the wild, then they may not be ready for it. But here you get to see the fresh propoganda put out all ready to be devoured by those who can see its weaknesses. The net effect is that the astroturfers set up a series of strawmen against themselves! And if there's the odd occasion when it isn't a strawman, then it's right that it shouldn't get knocked down. But on the whole, astroturfers act like a vaccine against FUD.
You're not missing anything based on the evidence available to us. The conclusion is that there's something behind the scenes. It makes me wonder what sort of deals are being made between Microsoft and the directors at Novell.
Heh. I don't know if anyone has ever read Tik Tok by John Sladek, but that's exactly what the central character does at one point, taking shameless advantage of do-gooding Robot's Rights campaigners to further his evil agenda. One of the best books that I've ever read and everything you need to know about why we shouldn't create machines that can think!
All the I know, is that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (Across the Seventh Dimension), was the worst thing that I ever ever got in charades once. My sister got Jaws!
Hmmmmm. Maybe. But the USA is massively in debt. It's bad when a person owes money but the US government has borrowed enormously to fund the invasion of Iraq. So there simply may not be the reserves for this. If China wants to wage economic war on the US, a good way would be to provoke the US into trying to gear up for a new Space race.
Big movers and shakers in the new race? Europe and China. Haven't worked out which way Russia will fly, yet. But the Japanese have some major money they might invest in the Space race by proxy. Maybe they will assist the US in a new Space race.
Unfortunately for Garry Kasparov, dealing with Vladimir Putin differs sharply from simply playing a chess game. In chess, there is a set of rules respected by both players. The rules dictate the means of determining a winner.
There are rules in chess, but you make it sound civilised. Chess is an incredibly aggressive game when you get to championship level. Kasparov has not only brains but also a Hell of a lot of attitude. If you read the linked article, Kasparov sounds far from a fool. And as he points out, he's not trying to get elected. His aim is to keep democracy alive and I believe he can have a very positive effect in doing so. I wish him luck.
Ain't that the truth! I spent over a whole day once getting Zork: Grand Inquisitor to work for a friend. It would have been less if I knew what I was doing from the start, of course. But I eventually got it going with Virtual Machine and an old Windows-98 install.
Had a friend at university who used to throw knives and had a target drawn on his door. He was chucking a knife at it when his room mate walked in a fraction of a second after he'd thrown it. So we're all sitting there in stunned silence as this door swings shut behind him with a knife positioned right behind his head and he looks at us all and says "What's the matter with you lot?"
The difference between funny and death is very fine sometimes.
They were elected with a powerful majority. What was it? Something like 60% with an overall turnout of over 70%? They need to be negotiated with because they actually represent the people and in order to secure peace you need to engage the people. It's no good dismantling the government (which is what the US had a good go at doing) and saying, "no thanks - we'll negotiate with these representatives instead" because they aren't the representatives of the people. Like it or not, in order to negotiate with the people you have to let them choose their own representatives. Trying to appoint representatives for them who will say what you want them to say instead of what the people want you to say, will get you nowhere. In fact it will do a great deal of harm. Imagine some country dictating to you who you are allowed to elect!
I posted quite a long reply a little further up about what I actually think about Hamas.
Just went and tried that and yes, you still can. Have to be pretty quick though. I managed to get two matches out of five. I'm discounting the three where the phosphorous got rubbed off to the point it wouldn't have lighted anyway.
No, Captain Patronising. I'm running it on Ubuntu Edgy Eft and I have OO 2.0.4. Writer and Calc work well (though Calc takes an age to save large spreadsheets). Base is all but unusable. Aside from certain functionality simply not working such as the Forms Wizard which wont complete, it has numerous odd little bugs such as having to close and re-open Base entirely to see updates I have made to a table with SQL. When doing so, it also managed to get itself into a mess where by it had a duplicate column that could not be removed. Even just putting together a very simple database through the wizards I had it crash on me over half a dozen times in the space of two hours. Less seriously, but annoyingly were the long long waits for it to do things like switch to viewing tables from the query section (up to 10 seconds), open a table for data entry (about the same with no visible sign that it was doing so resulting in me getting two or more copies of the table open at once), linking a spreadsheet in Calc to the database (anything up to 30-40 seconds with no feedback).
I have a lot of respect for Open Office and I'm keen to use it. But they really need to take the time to focus on speeding it up and making it solid. Right now, they give the appearance of being in some desperate race to follow Microsoft's every design decision.
They've got all the functionality that msot people really need. They need to consolidate what they already have.
Amen to that! No more new features. No more wizziness. Stop it freezing and crashing (especially base on Linux which is close to unusable), and make it work. It may not be as exciting as adding on another widget, but it is what OO really, really needs.
Ha! I was going to post that myself. Since they broke Sharpmusique a while ago, I've been unable to buy music from them. It would take me all of ten minutes to download the same music for free if I wanted (and possibly in better quality), but I've been buying it from iTunes instead. And now that's locked to me. I don't think I account for however many millions their revenue dropped, mind you. But I did buy a reasonable amount.
If they are so willing to neogtiate peace, what the heck are they waiting for to recognize the right of Israel to exist?
There are over a million palestinians living in refugee camps. We now have a generation that has known nothing but being a refugee. The answer to what are they waiting for before accepting peace, for a lot of palestinians, is for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories that it invaded in 1967 and give back their homes. The invasion was condemned as illegal and remains so, but with the continuous backing of the US government, Israal has never relinquished control of the land it seized.
I can only really refer you to my earlier post. The Hamas government were not in any sense about to launch an effort to wipe Israel off the map. Look at the disparity of the situation and tell me the idea is not absurd. Furthermore, they had swept to victory on a platform of ending corruption and the vast majority of the palestinian people were in favour of a two-state solution and Israel's continued existence. Both the Hamas government and the palestinian people knew that the election was not a statement of hostility towards Israel.
Leaving aside the reality of the situation, Hamas itself has been making negotiation noises for years now. One of their founders, Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi, said back in 2002 that "we can accept a truce with them and we can live side by side and refer the issue to coming generations." Unfortunately he was later assasinated by the Israelis. Hamas had also declared a cease-fire and a truce at the time of the elections.
I don't have time or inclination to dig out interviews from the time, though the BBC gives a few opinions hree.
Like it or not, the government that the palestinian people chose was not a threat to Israel at that time, and certainly not a threat to the US or its people. Nevertheless, the US and Israel saw fit to destabalise that government for political reasons. And the clear message was sent to the palestinian people that democracy was allowed to them only subject to US approval.
If a government is freely elected by its people, and with such an overwhelming majority as Hamas was given, then that government represents the people and it is that government that must be negotiated with if you wish to negotiate with that people.
Slashdot Mirror
I've bought from Baen. As a company they are brilliant. I'd wish a broader range of fiction from them, but they're a great company. I just wish that a decent ebook reader was an order of magnitude cheaper. They ought to be. All I really want is a screen and a really minimal amount of computer power and storage attached so it can run a PDF display and browser. Not much to ask, you'd think.
So post some of this information or directions to it. That would be the responsible thing to do.
I've never understood how americans can keep a cat cooped up in a house all of its life. In the UK, cats almost always have a cat flap and come and go as they please. Anything else seems cruel.
Yes. I wish the public would get this. We're all criminals! To add someone to the database just find something and convict the, For the few who have managed to avoid breaking any of the multitude of laws (and how do you know you haven't there are so many), the laws will just continue to be piled up until there's something you will break whether its criminalising the smoking of relaxing substances or using a PGP key that hasn't been registered with the government. When needed, you will be a criminal. You may not even need to be convicted. There are thousands of DNA samples preserved by the UK police of people who were never convicted of anything and their names are on the police database.
And sepearate to the information on the crimes you may or may not have committed could be a lot of personal information that you may not wish to be searchable by the huge number of people that have access to this.
That sums it up for me. The one advantage of a one-time or disposable credit card number would be anonymity. This doesn't have that. I want something I can buy in a shop for cash, load up with a pre-paid amount and use online, throwing away when I'm done with it.
Well that's fine for the companies that provided this solution. Because now there is lucrative money in fixing the security problem. If they got it right the first time then the big money would dry up. Government contracts are about redistributing your tax money to private business. Basically.
Well that's a good thing because if someone is set upon by biased propoganda out in the wild, then they may not be ready for it. But here you get to see the fresh propoganda put out all ready to be devoured by those who can see its weaknesses. The net effect is that the astroturfers set up a series of strawmen against themselves! And if there's the odd occasion when it isn't a strawman, then it's right that it shouldn't get knocked down. But on the whole, astroturfers act like a vaccine against FUD.
So when is
You're not missing anything based on the evidence available to us. The conclusion is that there's something behind the scenes. It makes me wonder what sort of deals are being made between Microsoft and the directors at Novell.
Heh. I don't know if anyone has ever read Tik Tok by John Sladek, but that's exactly what the central character does at one point, taking shameless advantage of do-gooding Robot's Rights campaigners to further his evil agenda. One of the best books that I've ever read and everything you need to know about why we shouldn't create machines that can think!
My god! That's the first good argument for DRM I have ever heard!
Quick - somebody post a screenshot!
All the I know, is that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (Across the Seventh Dimension), was the worst thing that I ever ever got in charades once. My sister got Jaws!
Hmmmmm. Maybe. But the USA is massively in debt. It's bad when a person owes money but the US government has borrowed enormously to fund the invasion of Iraq. So there simply may not be the reserves for this. If China wants to wage economic war on the US, a good way would be to provoke the US into trying to gear up for a new Space race.
Big movers and shakers in the new race? Europe and China. Haven't worked out which way Russia will fly, yet. But the Japanese have some major money they might invest in the Space race by proxy. Maybe they will assist the US in a new Space race.
I think you meant to reply to the GP. It wasn't my analogy.
There are rules in chess, but you make it sound civilised. Chess is an incredibly aggressive game when you get to championship level. Kasparov has not only brains but also a Hell of a lot of attitude. If you read the linked article, Kasparov sounds far from a fool. And as he points out, he's not trying to get elected. His aim is to keep democracy alive and I believe he can have a very positive effect in doing so. I wish him luck.
Ain't that the truth! I spent over a whole day once getting Zork: Grand Inquisitor to work for a friend. It would have been less if I knew what I was doing from the start, of course. But I eventually got it going with Virtual Machine and an old Windows-98 install.
Had a friend at university who used to throw knives and had a target drawn on his door. He was chucking a knife at it when his room mate walked in a fraction of a second after he'd thrown it. So we're all sitting there in stunned silence as this door swings shut behind him with a knife positioned right behind his head and he looks at us all and says "What's the matter with you lot?"
The difference between funny and death is very fine sometimes.
They were elected with a powerful majority. What was it? Something like 60% with an overall turnout of over 70%? They need to be negotiated with because they actually represent the people and in order to secure peace you need to engage the people. It's no good dismantling the government (which is what the US had a good go at doing) and saying, "no thanks - we'll negotiate with these representatives instead" because they aren't the representatives of the people. Like it or not, in order to negotiate with the people you have to let them choose their own representatives. Trying to appoint representatives for them who will say what you want them to say instead of what the people want you to say, will get you nowhere. In fact it will do a great deal of harm. Imagine some country dictating to you who you are allowed to elect!
I posted quite a long reply a little further up about what I actually think about Hamas.
Just went and tried that and yes, you still can. Have to be pretty quick though. I managed to get two matches out of five. I'm discounting the three where the phosphorous got rubbed off to the point it wouldn't have lighted anyway.
No, Captain Patronising. I'm running it on Ubuntu Edgy Eft and I have OO 2.0.4. Writer and Calc work well (though Calc takes an age to save large spreadsheets). Base is all but unusable. Aside from certain functionality simply not working such as the Forms Wizard which wont complete, it has numerous odd little bugs such as having to close and re-open Base entirely to see updates I have made to a table with SQL. When doing so, it also managed to get itself into a mess where by it had a duplicate column that could not be removed. Even just putting together a very simple database through the wizards I had it crash on me over half a dozen times in the space of two hours. Less seriously, but annoyingly were the long long waits for it to do things like switch to viewing tables from the query section (up to 10 seconds), open a table for data entry (about the same with no visible sign that it was doing so resulting in me getting two or more copies of the table open at once), linking a spreadsheet in Calc to the database (anything up to 30-40 seconds with no feedback).
I have a lot of respect for Open Office and I'm keen to use it. But they really need to take the time to focus on speeding it up and making it solid. Right now, they give the appearance of being in some desperate race to follow Microsoft's every design decision.
They've got all the functionality that msot people really need. They need to consolidate what they already have.
Amen to that! No more new features. No more wizziness. Stop it freezing and crashing (especially base on Linux which is close to unusable), and make it work. It may not be as exciting as adding on another widget, but it is what OO really, really needs.
Ha! I was going to post that myself. Since they broke Sharpmusique a while ago, I've been unable to buy music from them. It would take me all of ten minutes to download the same music for free if I wanted (and possibly in better quality), but I've been buying it from iTunes instead. And now that's locked to me. I don't think I account for however many millions their revenue dropped, mind you. But I did buy a reasonable amount.
I'm sorry. I almost forgot to answer this:
There are over a million palestinians living in refugee camps. We now have a generation that has known nothing but being a refugee. The answer to what are they waiting for before accepting peace, for a lot of palestinians, is for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories that it invaded in 1967 and give back their homes. The invasion was condemned as illegal and remains so, but with the continuous backing of the US government, Israal has never relinquished control of the land it seized.
I can only really refer you to my earlier post. The Hamas government were not in any sense about to launch an effort to wipe Israel off the map. Look at the disparity of the situation and tell me the idea is not absurd. Furthermore, they had swept to victory on a platform of ending corruption and the vast majority of the palestinian people were in favour of a two-state solution and Israel's continued existence. Both the Hamas government and the palestinian people knew that the election was not a statement of hostility towards Israel.
Leaving aside the reality of the situation, Hamas itself has been making negotiation noises for years now. One of their founders, Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi, said back in 2002 that "we can accept a truce with them and we can live side by side and refer the issue to coming generations." Unfortunately he was later assasinated by the Israelis. Hamas had also declared a cease-fire and a truce at the time of the elections.
I don't have time or inclination to dig out interviews from the time, though the BBC gives a few opinions hree.
Like it or not, the government that the palestinian people chose was not a threat to Israel at that time, and certainly not a threat to the US or its people. Nevertheless, the US and Israel saw fit to destabalise that government for political reasons. And the clear message was sent to the palestinian people that democracy was allowed to them only subject to US approval.
If a government is freely elected by its people, and with such an overwhelming majority as Hamas was given, then that government represents the people and it is that government that must be negotiated with if you wish to negotiate with that people.